Don’t Get Stung By AI in Your College Application Essay

I first warned readers here about using AI for writing college admissions essays back in February 2023.

My post, Can ChatGPT Write Your College Application Essay?, discussed my thoughts after testing out the new ChatGPT with some sample writing.

I didn’t go into the ethical debate over AI use—namely, it is plagiarism—but warned students away for other reasons.

I truly thought they could—and should—write more effective essays themselves.

Even though these LLMs have gotten way better at writing anything, I stand by this opinion more than three years later.

The whole point of a personal statement is to help students stand out from their competitors, and to provide the admissions deciders highly personal information about students, and directly from students, so they choose those who will be the best fit—for everyone.

If you don’t represent yourself accurately, including what you have to say about yourself and how you say it, your personal statement will be pretty worthless.

It can be packed with big words and have an “impressive” voice (sounding like an adult even), and seem like an accomplished piece of writing—but that’s not going to help you.

Because it is not you.

I can’t imagine how tempting it must be these days to just type in a bunch of information about yourself, include some personal stories and give the LLM specific directions about what you want it to write—and voila, out pops a coherent essay that sounds and flows like you think it should.

You could be done with these stupid essays in a half hour or less.

I wish it were that simple. The truth is your AI-generated essay will backfire.

Not only will it not set you apart from other students since it will be generic drivel, but it robs you of the opportunity to let your dream schools see who you really are—what you have done, how you did it and why it matters. And most importantly, it also flattens how you sound explaining all this about yourself on paper. It’s called your writing “voice.”

 

 

There’s also the little problem that you could get caught.

All colleges and universities that I know of have explicit policies about AI in college application essays. It’s a huge NO. They also run them through detector apps, though highly unreliable, that could snare your essay, even if you try to cover your tracks with, say, a humanizer app. (Can you see how crazy this all is?)

If they see you have copied and pasted any AI generated content in your essay, you’re automatically out of the game.

I believe the process of writing about yourself in these essays—thinking about your past, digging out interesting real-life stories and reflecting on what you have learned—has its own intrinsic value. But I know that personal growth is not a high priority at this point for over-loaded, stressed-out college bound students.

At this point in your life, your focus is on landing a great college. There’s plenty of time to get to “know yourself” later. I get that.

So trust these other reasons to resist the AI temptation and do your own work.

I believe there are other ways to enlist AI if you need extra help, such as brainstorming topic ideas, researching related information and even copyediting (for spelling, typos, grammar, etc. ONLY).

To stay on the safe side, don’t use a single word, sentence or paragraph from your pal Claude or whatever platform you use.

AI writing is getting better and better, and it’s more difficult than ever to tell apart from human-generated work. Someday students might be off the hook for writing these essays.

But until then, just do the work, and try to enjoy, or at least value, the struggle.

Like it or not, you’ll learn a little about yourself and strengthen your ability to THINK!

That is something no AI machine can do for you. At least not yet.